Mercora links with Time-Warner's NME

Mercora's getting downright respectable these days. The company, which combines Internet radio and legal music downloads, used to terrify music execs. Some speculated that the peer-to-peer service would hurt music sales because subscribers can download music from each other's hard drives legally or listen to the music on someone else's hard drive. Get thousands of people together and you essentially come close to music-on-demand. (The safety valve is that songs on the Mercora network are not in MP3 format, which curbs piracy.)

Now Mercora has linked up with NME.Com to create MyNME Radio, a version of the service in the U.K. It will become available by the end of Q2 2006.

Mercora was founded by Srivats Sampath, who helped found McAfee and was one the original employees of Netscape.